Security Bulletin: Watson AI Gateway for Cloud Pak for Data is vulnerable to Ansible Runner code execution and could allow a local authenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on the system, caused by improper shell escaping of the shell command.

Summary

Ansible Runner could allow a local authenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on the system, caused by improper shell escaping of the shell command. (CVE-2021-4041) See further details below.

Vulnerability Details

CVEID:CVE-2021-4041
**DESCRIPTION:**Ansible Runner could allow a local authenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on the system, caused by improper shell escaping of the shell command. By sending a specially-crafted request using the ansible_runner.interface.run_command, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code on the host system.
CVSS Base score: 7.3
CVSS Temporal Score: See: https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/234439 for the current score.
CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H)

Affected Products and Versions

Remediation/Fixes

Watson Gateway is an internal component, it does not expose any APIs externally. If a remote attacker gained access to the internal CP4D cluster, they could exploit this vulnerability. By sending a specially-crafted request using the ansible_runner.interface.run_command, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code on the host system.

Watson AI Gateway for CP4D is currently running version 2.0.4 of ansible-runner since 4.5.3. This vulnerability was fixed in 2.0.4 - see here: <https://github.com/ansible/ansible-runner/commits/2.0.4/ansible_runner/runner.py&gt;

Workarounds and Mitigations

None